Secular India has failed to give Indian Muslims a fair deal. To all but the prejudiced, the bare
facts are too stark to be ignored or explained away any longer. Problems of educational and
economic backwardness, social discrimination and political under-representation continue to
dog a community of around 150 million. As if that were not bad enough, there is widespread
prejudice and demonisation to mask decades of denial. And as epitomised by the genocide in
Gujarat, even the constitutional guarantee of security to life and limb to every citizen cannot
be taken for granted by India’s Muslims.

Correction, Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP did offer freedom from riots as barter for votes. As a rider, the grateful community was, and is, expected to ask for little else. So if, for example, under ‘Maulana’ Mulayam’s raj, of the 1,300 police constables recently selected, 1,000 are Yadavs and only 30 Muslims make the grade, don’t complain. Mayawati, of course, went a step further. Muslim support to her party in UP did not stop her from campaigning for the BJP’s Narendra Modi in Gujarat within months of the genocide.

Notwithstanding the recent agitation by a section of medical students, among the political class at least there is now near consensus over the principle of affirmative action. Yet, even here there are double standards at work. Every time Muslims make a demand (or what appears to be a demand) for reservation on a religious basis, there is outrage and uproar. But few question the religion-based quota system that has been government policy for over five decades. Dalit Muslims and Christians are barred from availing of the quota for scheduled castes that was initially meant only for Hindus but which has since been extended to neo-Buddhists and Sikhs among Dalits. Meanwhile, for lack of adequate organisation and clout, Muslim OBCs continue to struggle for their due share.

Given the deep disappointment of the country’s Muslims with Indian secularism, what is to be done? Taking a cue from the performance of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind-inspired Assam United Democratic Front in the recently concluded assembly polls in that state, the opportunist and incendiary Imam Bukhari from Delhi and Maulana Kalbe Jawwad, a Shia cleric from UP, have launched their respective Muslim fronts. Both will enter the electoral fray next year. But paradoxical as it may seem to some, instead of welcoming the fronts, Muslims in UP and elsewhere in the country have castigated the move as "dangerous" and "suicidal". Ironically, the sharpest critique of the nascent fronts has come from the national leadership of the Jamiat, the very body whose "Assam model" both Bukhari and Jawwad aim to replicate in UP. Bukhari, incidentally, has been itching to form a Muslim party ever since he took over the reigns of Delhi’s Shahi Jama Masjid from his father, Abdullah Bukhari. A commentator writing in the Milli Gazette in February 2004 summed up the widespread Muslim sentiment with the words: "The sangh parivar cannot ask for anything more." This is the subject of our cover story this month.

The last two months saw a lot of agitated students on the streets and impassioned debate in the media on the new "threat" posed to the principle of "meritocracy" by "Mandal II". While Communalism Combat unhesitatingly supports affirmative action, we believe it is valid to ask who benefits and whether caste should be the only relevant identity criteria (what about gender, regional, religious and economic barriers?) for quotas. For the benefit of our readers, we are publishing two articles proposing educational reservation criteria that marry the concern for merit with the principle of social justice.

Two fact-finding teams comprising members from secular action groups and civil liberties organisations investigated the accidental bomb blasts at the residence of RSS/Bajrang Dal workers in Nanded and the shooting down of terrorists by the police thus supposedly aborting their bid to blow up the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. Both reports make disturbing reading. The first report questions why the police are going so soft on the terrorist designs of Hindutva organisations and activists even after the Nanded blast has uncovered clues that the same forces had a hand in three earlier bomb blasts in Maharashtra. The second report raises the question whether as part of some design the police is faking encounters and misrepresenting them as successful attempts to foil "Islamic terrorist" attacks on Hindutva leaders and organisations.

Does anyone remember the two-decade old incident at Hashimpura in Meerut where in the course of a communal conflagration PAC jawans rounded up over 40 young Muslims, shot them point-blank and threw their bodies in a canal? We have a report on a court ruling, 20 years later, that charges 17 PAC men with killing the 41 Muslims. Also being published in this issue is an interesting article by the American Imam Abu Laith Luqman Ahmad. The article argues that Muslims in the US, or elsewhere, could be using Islamophobia as a convenient excuse to avoid honest introspection.